


Coefficient of Happiness

by Lokei



Category: Fantastic Four (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-09
Updated: 2006-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei





	Coefficient of Happiness

Ben was used to looking after Reed. After all, he’d had plenty of practice. Ever since the kid had wandered into the flight simulator control room looking for the satellite imaging systems (he was only two floors off), Ben had taken the earnest, idealistic MIT grad under his wing and kept the bullies and nay-sayers at arm’s length (NASA, like any government agency, had a few). And any headaches the kid caused (even long after anyone else could reasonably call Reed a kid, especially given he and Ben weren’t that different in age) were amply compensated by the look on Reed’s face the first time Ben brought back the tangible results of the latest project Reed had begged him to carry into orbit. After that, there was never even a murmur when Dr. Richards’ experiments always seemed to find space on Grimm’s flights, no matter how fierce the competition for research spots. Ben never got tired of Reed’s enthusiasm—and Reed never disappointed on that score.

Ben was convinced that in his (completely oblivious and) hubris-free way, Reed was convinced he was going to save the world.

And if shepherding the braniac through real life sometimes got to feeling like a full time job, at least said brainiac provided an equally endless supply of oddities to keep Ben quietly amused. Many of them were occasioned by run-ins with the opposite gender. He saw the great Reed Richards, who could calculate massive equations of quantum physics in his head, stumble and trip over a matter of correct change for a bus when Sue Storm smiled at him. Ben had to admit he was impressed (but not very loudly, of course). Privately, Ben also had to admit that Susie wasn’t maybe really his sort of girl, but she seemed to be good for Reed, and Ben had to approve of anything that made Reed interested in something other than chalk dust and electrons. Especially as he was so often covered in it. (Chalk dust, not electrons.)

Still, Ben wasn’t terribly surprised when Sue lost out to supercharged subatomic particles. Sorry, certainly, but not surprised.

Nor was he surprised that he spent the next two months scooping a drunken and destroyed Reed Richards off the floor of his lab/living room and pouring the good doctor into bed while he raved soggily about relationship variables, the coefficient of happiness, and total eclipses. (Ben still hadn’t figured out where that third bit fit in.) But then Reed inexplicably sobered up, and for the next twenty-two months threw himself into his work with a passion that surpassed all his previous furies of calculation.

Unfortunately the string of bad luck which had plagued some of Reed’s projects seemed to worsen in Sue’s absence until one day Ben found himself standing under the thirty-foot metal statue of monomaniac, gambling both Reed’s and his own professional standing—not to mention solvency—on the whim of a man with too many toys.

That one of those toys was Susan Storm just proved that the Universe had a nasty sense of humor.

And a week later, standing drinking in the cool Colorado air when he should by all rights have been dead, Ben decided he ought to take things into his own hands. (Why did he always have to do everything by himself?)

Sue was miserable. Reed was miserable. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this equation.

Damn the coefficient of whatever and all Reed’s other bull, Ben thought with a smirk. Give him enough wine and an opportunity and even Reed wouldn’t be able to screw up the sum of one man plus one woman.

He hoped.  



End file.
